The big picture
Every Music League moves through three states from start to finish: Draft, Active, and Completed. While the league is Active, each round inside it cycles through four phases: Upcoming, Submitting, Voting, and Completed. Once every round has wrapped up, the league itself completes automatically.
A typical lifecycle looks like this:
- Draft — you're still setting it up.
- Active — you've launched. Round 1 sits in Upcoming until your chosen start date, then cycles through Submitting → Voting → Completed. The next round picks up where it left off and does the same thing. Repeat for every round.
- Completed — all rounds have finished. Standings, results, and the playlist stay viewable.
What are the three league states?
- Draft — Your league exists, but only you can see it. You can change any setting, add or remove rounds, and adjust the schedule freely. Drafts sit under the Drafts tab on your leagues page until you launch, and no invitations or notifications go out yet. Drafts stick around as long as your account does — you won't lose work if you set one aside for a while.
- Active — You've tapped Launch. The league is live, your invite link starts working, and any direct invitations queued during Draft are sent. From here, rounds run on the schedule you set.
- Completed — Every round has finished voting. The status flips to Completed automatically, no action required. Members can still open the league, scroll through every round's results and playlist, and look at the final standings — but nothing new can be submitted or voted on.
What are the four round phases?
Every round inside an Active league moves through these phases in order:
- Upcoming — The round exists on the schedule but hasn't opened yet. Nothing for players to do here, but the round shows up on the league page so they can see what's coming.
- Submitting — Players pick songs that fit the round's theme and submit them. The submission phase runs from
opens_atuntil the submission deadline. - Voting — Submissions are locked, the round playlist is published, and players distribute their points across everyone else's songs.
- Completed — Voting has closed and results are revealed. The round is read-only from this point on; results, comments (if visible), and the playlist remain available for everyone to revisit.
In some places — like the schedule editor — you may see these called the Submission phase and Voting phase. They refer to the same thing as the Submitting and Voting phases above.
Why does Round 1 feel different?
When you launch a league, the league flips to Active right away — but Round 1 almost always stays in Upcoming for a while. That's by design. Round 1's opens_at is the date and time you picked when setting the schedule, and giving yourself a few days between launch and Round 1 opening lets people join via your invite link before submissions begin.
If you set Round 1 to open immediately at launch, the league still goes Active and Round 1 jumps straight to Submitting — but you lose the join window. For most leagues, setting Round 1 a few days out works best. See Inviting Players to Your League for more on how the invite flow works.
What happens if a round doesn't get enough submissions?
If fewer than three players submit a song before the deadline, the round can't run a meaningful vote. In that case the round is skipped — the admin is notified, the round is marked closed without results, and the league moves on to the next one. Players who did submit are not penalized; the round simply doesn't count.
For everything else — too few players to spend all their votes, too few songs for the per-song cap — the system auto-adjusts so voting can still run. See How Voting Rules Work (and How They Auto-Adjust) for the details.
When does the league complete?
Once the last round's voting period ends, the league checks itself and flips from Active to Completed automatically. There's no button to push and no admin action needed. Members get one final notification with the closing results, and from then on the league lives on as a record of what was played.
Completed leagues stay visible to every member. You can browse every round's results, replay the playlists, see who won, and revisit comments — exactly as they were on the final day. You just can't submit, vote, or add new rounds.